Age of Reason

Do Good Works

Here's the way to think about using your money to "do good works": conservative think tanks spend about $1 billion/year. Thanks largely to them, a President who should have lost by 40 points has been reelected. In his first term, President Bush looted the treasury of $100s of billions, discarding Americans' money on corporate cronies, tax cuts for the rich, a useless war in Iraq, etc etc. They spend $1 billion, and $100 billion come back.

So the next time you have $1000 to give to organizations that do good work, to any of the dozens of fine organizations listed above that concentrate on helping individuals, flush the money down the toilet instead but save $10 and give it to an organization like Rockridge, the CAP, or DemocracyForAmerica that will spend the money on politics, structure, strategy, or message or idea development. It will do just as much good as the $1000 would have.

I understand that it feels better to give the money directly to the poor, but you've already been doing that, and that's why we didn't beat George Bush by 40 points. All of those things that charity organizations do -- they're things that the government should do. You can either spend $1000 to fix the problem after its broken, or you can spend $1 to prevent it happening in the first place.

[Don't get me wrong, though. Charity-type organizations are great for your friends who aren't political enough to spend money fixing our country. For example if you have apolitical parents, or Republican ones, you should definitely convince them to give money to a battered women's shelter.]

posted by conchis @ 1:14 AM